Poverty eradication is at the top of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) agenda. Poverty remains one of the greatest challenges in the SADC region, with approximately half of the population living on less than $1 a day, according to the International Council on Social Welfare. Hunger, malnutrition, Gender Inequalities, exploitation, marginalisation, high morbidity, and HIV and AIDS are a few of the complex challenges that contribute to poverty in the SADC region.

Planning for Poverty Eradication

The Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan is the regional framework that guides SADC in achieving its development objectives through sustainable economic growth and economic integration. This plan identifies poverty eradication as the overarching priority of Regional Integration in Southern Africa. To elaborate on this plan and to translate its priorities into an implementation framework, SADC has also developed the Regional Poverty Reduction Framework. This framework covers critical areas where a regional approach is expected to strengthen the national interventions in the fight against poverty.

In order to ensure that the plan and the framework are achieving their targets, SADC’s Regional Poverty Observatory will be functional by 2013 to monitor progress towards poverty reduction targets of SADC Member States.

Partnerships to Tackle Poverty

SADC recognises that the poverty challenge is not insurmountable and can be tackled by the following measures:

The Poverty and Development Programme

This programme is intended to contribute to the realisation of regional poverty eradication targets and the Millennium Development Goals. Through its operation, it seeks to address structural, historical, and global drivers of poverty in the SADC region and to enable SADC and Member States to increase action against poverty.

In the current framework of the strategic review of the “Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan” (RISDP) the SADC Secretariat has prioritized the above mentioned functions and commenced on a Policy Analysis and Dialogue Programme.The programme is intended to promote regional policy dialogue and debate on key regional integration issues aiming at guiding development of regional policy processes